Christmas trees and such

I am pleased to announce that the Nill family Christmas trees of 2015 are up, decorated, and twinkling away! That's right, I said "trees". Twins this year! Fraternal though - they are different sizes.

Our main tree was born first.

He is a large Frasier Fir and goes in the family room, which is in the back of the house where no one can see it but us. Since we have a foyer (which I have no idea what to do with, decorating and function-wise), we have extra space for another tree that can sit right in the front window.

She's a more petite Balsam Fir and smells amazing. Together they complete our family for the month of December. 

Overall tree hunting was pretty easy. In years past it has taken days to find the right one. Even though there are lots of local tree stands around town, we chose Home Depot. Honestly, there's a huge price difference and a lot of the time we have other things to get in the same trip, so mark us down as supporters of big box corporations :-/  Ashton found a branch that resembled a sword and it pretty quickly became all he cared about. 

Alex just clung to me and whined to be picked up. The whole time. Until it was time to leave of course, at which point he was suddenly interested in helping to get a tree on the car.

In fact he could barely lift a pine needle but it was very funny.

So we got the trees home and in their stands. We left them overnight to drop and that same night, Pete came. Pete is our elf, sent by Santa to observe behavior and report back, good or bad. Boy do I love this little red fellow. Here is what happened in the first five minutes of his arrival.

Pete brought the boys a train and set it up around the base of the Christmas tree. Ashton came in, saw the train, saw Pete, freaked out, jumped a lot. Once he calmed down, he sat with Alex and they watched the train go around the circle together.

Very soon Alex noticed there were extra tracks nearby. He picked one up, turned around, and Ashton snatched it right out of his hand. Alex started wailing. This happens a lot in our house.

Jason didn't miss a beat. "Ashton! You just stole that from Alex! And right in front of PETE!"

Ashton looked up and looked back at Alex with the guiltiest look I've ever seen. "Here Alex! Here you go! Here!" and offered the track back. When Alex didn't take it, Ashton grabbed his hand and forced him to hold it. "Sorry Alex, sorry."

It has been a magical couple of days. Last night, Alex was playing with a helicopter and Ashton really wanted it. He kept reaching for it but stopping juuuuuust short of taking it out of Alex's hands. I acknowledged that he was doing the right thing, waiting for Alex to finish his turn, and he started to cry. He was very conflicted you see, he wanted that helicopter so badly but knew Pete would report "naughty" to Santa if he stole it like he ordinarily would. He had no choice but to wait. It was hard. I felt a little sorry for him. That Pete, he's a force.

That night we had a successful tree decorating session, complete with ornaments that were dropped, clumped together, double-branched or hung upside down somehow. Also, Ashton would not come down off the step stool, but that's fine.

 Final check...

Looks good!

After the boys were in bed, I decorated our little foyer tree and our scenes were complete!

I'll leave you with two secrets for a perfect Christmas tree.
1) Get oversized metallic silver or gold balls, the really shiny ones, and place them deep within the boughs, closer to the trunk. They reflect all the lights and make the tree seem extra twinkly without taking up valuable outer branch hanging space.
2) Don't forget your carols! (← please watch it. Ahhh his 4 year old voice, I can't even.) It's always important to have the right music :)